AI: The Time to Act is Now
In the mid-1980’s I was finishing an engineering degree at the University of New Brunswick and the age of desktop computing for business was just starting to take flight. Office 365 had not even been imagined, but Volkswriter was an amazing word processor and Visicalc was starting to change how accounting did its work. New businesses were forming to service the emerging markets for local area networks, small, medium, and large-sized business technology implementations and consulting, and an exciting emerging market for business-focused PC-based software was started. Home computing was a “thing”, and I was even able to connect to the mainframe at the university from our IBM PC Jr using our 300-baud acoustic coupler modem.
I completed my degree in 1986 and had become enthralled with the computer business and headed to the University of Saskatchewan to complete a master’s degree in computer science. It was such an interesting time and the grad students I was with did some amazing work. It was the early days of desktop and workstation graphics (remember Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics?), SQL databases, computer performance and operating system studies, and lots of fascinating companies being formed. Some of our fellow students and friends went on to work for startup companies like Pixar and Apple. No one knew exactly where it was all heading. It certainly seemed that the world would never turn back from these digital technologies, but building a business case for investment in these newer technologies was nearly impossible. For one thing, it was very difficult, or basically impossible, to build an understanding of the (assumed) productivity improvements for workers using the technologies.
AI has a long history
In parallel, my sister Barbara Wasson Lillehaug was studying AI and completing her masters and PhD in the field. Yes, in the 1980’s AI was a “thing” too. She never left the field, although she did leave Canada for Norway in 1990 and never second-guessed a career in AI. Nearly 40-years later she and her team at University of Bergen (UiB) in Bergen, Norway just received a CDN $27M research grant to continue their research on hybrid intelligence. Countries are investing huge sums of money to establish AI-capabilities to empower their citizens, businesses, and society to adapt to the changes AI is now bringing to our lives.
For many people, it seems like this AI phenomenon has appeared out of thin air. It hasn’t. There are many branches of AI that have existed for decades, like computer vision and robotics, that permeate many industrialized processes. The algorithms behind generative AI, the supposed “new” kid on the street, have been worked on for years. So, what has changed to make it feel like this is all new?
Two of the most critical factors that have given rise to this “new” era of pervasive AI represented by Generative AI (or GenAI) are 1) access to extremely powerful and flexible cloud computing-based processing, and 2) access to large datasets that enable processing and training of algorithms that enable GenAI to do its magic (more on that to come, but most people have at least experienced GenAI by now via ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot). With these two enabling factors in place, organizations working for years on these capabilities have been able to bring “out of the labs” commercial-grade tools, apps, and solutions that are changing the way we work and live.
Back to the future
In the early 1990s I had friends and family asking if they needed to adopt computers and data processing in their businesses. “What should we do?” they would ask. “What will the return be if I invest in this?” “What kind of skills do I need to bring on board to leverage it all?” Even in those early days of digitalizing their businesses, some owners were keen, some skeptical, and most uncertain. Although it played out over a comparatively long period of time, those that didn’t take action to move forward with the rest of the world in digitalizing their businesses are, well, probably not in business anymore.
Sound familiar? Those are the same questions we hear today about adopting AI in our businesses, lives, and society. I’m quite concerned about what I’m seeing happening today regarding businesses taking action – I fear that many are not reacting quickly enough to develop their knowledge and implement AI in their business processes. Three factors are at play:
1) The impact of not adopting – just as with the original digitalization movement, failure to adopt will likely have significant impact on your competitiveness.
2) The time frames to “act” are a fraction of what they were with the digitalization of business in the 1990’s.
3) Many people don’t really understand what the fuss is all about (hint: it’s a very different way of computing and problem solving), and many are making the mistake of assuming that this new form of “grammar checking” and “text generation” is all there is to it.
The AI Tsunami Wave
In my mind, the release of ChatGPT 3 by OpenAI in the fall of 2022 (there were previous editions launched, but this version allowed the public to work with this new tool and explore its functionality) was analogous to the sounding of a Tsunami alarm. In this case the alarm was signalling a new wave of computing capabilities that were and are building every day and heading towards us, ushering in the moment of profound new implications for the ways we work and live.
A significant amount of people “heard” the alarm but thought “this is another typical technology product hype cycle - we can wait and see”. Some people missed it completely and are still relatively unaware. Others heard the alarm but thought “this won’t impact us here on high ground”, and still more thought “computers can never think like humans - this is Hollywood artificial intelligence”. Interestingly, a whole cadre of content creators caught on to the possibilities and created new focus areas to attract viewership (and clicks) and new AI-based businesses saw incredible growth in market valuations.
There is no question in my mind that the changes AI now represent are woefully underestimated, as are the time frames on which it is going to happen and the scope of who (people and businesses) it will impact. This is the fastest adopted new technology we have ever seen, and that’s without many people really understanding what it is. What’s the justification for this thinking? My next few posts will talk about it.
What is very important for you to think about right now is “what are your plans for AI in your personal life and in your organization, and what is your structured plan to address it?”
If any of this “rings true” for you, stay tuned. We’re going to unpack how to respond to the AI Tsunami wave … and by the way, the first wave has already hit and is receding, but the second sequence of waves is edging closer to shore while you read this post, and it is even more powerful.
Thoughts or questions? Reach out and we can chat.